The Devil in Massachusetts Quotes

“But Mather's smile faded as he thought of what other provisions the charter contained. What would the godly say when they learned that the electorate was no longer to be limited to members of the Covenant but broadened to include propertied members of every Christian sect this side of papistry? This was a revolutionary innovation, whose consequences would be incalculable. Hitherto the limitation of the privilege of voting to the elect had been the very corner-stone of theocracy. It had been a wise and human provision designed to keep the faithful in control even when, as had long ago become the case, they were heavily outnumbered by lesser men without the Covenant. God who had not designated the majority of men to salvation surely never intended for the damned to rule. Yet now, under the new charter, it very much looked as if they might.”
― Marion L. Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry Into the Salem Witch Trials

“The human reality of what happens to millions is only for God to grasp; but what happens to individuals is another matter and within the range of mortal understanding...Witches in the abstract were not hanged in Salem; but one by one were brought to the gallows...After you have studied their lives faithfully, a remarkable thing happens; you discover that if you really know the few, you are on your way to understanding the millions. By grasping the local, the parochial even, it is possible to make a beginning at understanding the universal.”
― Marion L. Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry Into the Salem Witch Trials

“The one professional school, Harvard, had been founded to provide training for one profession only, the ministry; recently”
― Marion L. Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Inquiry into the Salem Witch Trials

“Yet although this particular delusion, at least in the form of a large-scale public enterprise, has vanished from the western world, the urge to hunt 'witches' has done nothing of the kind. It has been revived on a colossal scale by replacing the medieval idea of malefic witchcraft by pseudo-scientific concepts like 'race' and 'nationality,' and by substituting for theological dissension, a whole complex of warring ideologies. Accordingly, the story of 1692 is of far more than antiquarian interest: it is an allegory of our times. One would like to believe that leaders of the modern world can in the end deal with delusion as sanely and courageously as the men of old Massachusetts dealt with theirs.”
― Marion L. Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry Into the Salem Witch Trials

“The segregation of the girls would have served to localize the psychic infection, and the girls themselves, exposed to the wayward streak of poetry in Mather's composition, would almost certainly have found their fantasies deflected to the more normal preoccupations of adolescence. They would, in short, like a large proportion of the female members of his congregation at at given time, have fallen in love with him. Infatuation is not any guarantee against hysteria; quite the contrary. But in this case such a development might have diverted the antics of the girls to less malignant forms.”
― Marion L. Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry Into the Salem Witch Trials